


I've Got All This Ringing in My Ears and None On My Fingers

by magicandlight



Series: The States [49]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Statetalia
Genre: F/M, Fluffy, I Wrote This While Procrastinating On Literally Everything Else, NY/PA IS MARRIED FIGHT ME ON THIS I DARE YOU, Wedding Rings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 09:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17722772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandlight/pseuds/magicandlight
Summary: It takes two days for Brooke to realize she's not wearing her rings.





	I've Got All This Ringing in My Ears and None On My Fingers

It takes two days for Brooke to realize she's not wearing her rings. 

Brooke usually takes off her rings when she paints. It's too much trouble to clean the paint off of them if she leaves them on. 

Problem is, she took them off when she was painting two days ago and hasn't seen them since.

She tears through the entire loft looking for them. (Will would be happy. The loft is the neatest it's been in a decade.)

After she's gone through the whole loft and put it back together, she still doesn't have her rings.

And then she panics.

And then she calls Nicky. 

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Nicky raises his eyebrows when he sees the loft. "There aren't any stacks of books on the floor." He seems vaguely disappointed. Brooke understands. Her and Nicky are both fans of the messy apartment aesthetic, though Nicky's idea of messy involves potted plants and CDs and comics where Brooke's is art supplies and books.

Personally, Brooke feels that the stacks of books made it homier.

"I can't find my rings." Brooke blurts out after a minute.

Nicky's eyes dart down to her left hand to check. "Oh, that's not good."

Brooke rolls her eyes at him. "Understatement."

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Nicky helps her check the places she hadn't thought to check in her panic- like the vents in the floor and the sinks and her coat pockets.

They still don't find them.

They sit on the window seat- which, hey, they can actually do since Brooke moved all the canvases and books off of it in her search for her rings.

"When's Will coming back over again?" Nicky asks.

Brooke bites into her apple and chews miserably. "This weekend."

"How are you going to tell Will you lost your wedding ring _and_  your engagement ring?"

Brooke shrugs. She doesn't think Will is going to be mad at her, but she's mad enough at herself for both of them. How can she remember every insignificant thing she'd read or heard in her life but not remember where she put her rings?

"It'll be like that time you lost your keys and then found them right after you replaced them," Nicky predicts. Brooke punches him in the arm.

"You're awful."

Delta, who had gone to hide in the closet the second they started moving furniture, finally comes out again.

Brooke watches her for a few seconds and then goes back to her apple.

And then she's struck by a truly awful what-if.

Her and Nicky exchange looks.

Brooke exhales. "I'll call the vet."

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An x-ray and a very unhappy Delta later, Brooke still doesn't have her rings.

Nicky slings his arm around her shoulders on the walk to central park so Brooke can get back on Delta's good side. "Hey, at least she didn't eat your wedding ring."

"You aren't helping."

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She doesn't find them, and on Saturday she accepts that she has well and truly lost her ring and sits down to wait for Will.

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Will drops his bag onto the floor and stares. "It's... clean?"

Brooke frowns at him. "It wasn't dirty before."

This is true. Brooke couldn't stand dust and was easily distracted when things were messy- it was just that Brooke had her own definition of organization that involved books sorted by color and more books stacked under the coffee table and paintbrushes in interestingly shaped containers as decor. It was eccentric and eclectic and it sometimes drove Will crazy but Brooke's loft was an extension of her personality.

Sure, he could never find a book and he'd almost tripped over a potted plant Nicky had given her more times than he could count, but he liked the loft the way it was as much as Brooke did. He liked that the mantle was cluttered with all the little travel mementos Brooke had collected over the years and that there were three hatboxes full of letters he had sent her under her bed and that she had at least seven different strings of fairy lights above the big window.

Will gestures at the visible parts of the loft. "What's up with this?"

Brooke frowns. Will hooks his coat up beside hers before he sits down beside her, waiting for her to answer.

"I lost my rings." Brooke's shoulders slumped a little, voice softening.

Will blinked. Whatever he'd been expecting her to say, that wasn't it. He glanced at Brooke's hand, at the line of slightly paler skin on her finger where her rings usually were.

He rubs a hand over her spine reassuringly. "I'm sorry."

"We can get new ones?" He offers after a few moments.

Brooke frowned and just seemed more upset. "I don't want new ones. I want the  _ones_  that you gave me."

Oh.

Will looked at his own ring and thought about Brooke, smiling and radiant, slipping it onto his finger. Even the  _thought_  of losing his ring was painful. Will wrapped an arm around Brooke and pulled until she was tucked into his side.

"I'm so sorry, Brooke." He murmurs into her hair, and Brooke just buries her face into his neck. 

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On Sunday, her rings have been missing for a week. Brooke keeps rubbing at the pale skin where her rings used to be, and Will is halfway waiting for her to get sad about them again. 

Instead, she says, "So what if I got another tattoo."

Will chokes on air. " _What?_ "

With her previous tattoos, Brooke had just  _done_  it. He still had no clue when she had gotten her stars done because they had been too busy to see each other for months then, and the flowers on her ankles and  _excelsior_ on her wrist had just... shown up.

Brooke nods, raising her left hand meaningfully. 

"Wait, like a tattoo where your rings were?" Will had seen wedding ring tattoos before. They were pretty cool, but no thanks. 

Brooke nods. "So?"

Will doesn't even have to think about it. If it would make her less upset about losing her rings he was all for it. "Can I come?"

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"I am never getting a tattoo," Will says for the third time. The tattoo artist laughs.

Brooke is literally  _bleeding_ , and Will is so horrified by the entire process he can't even. "You're  _bleeding_. I can't believe you have tattoos on your  _spine_."

Brooke shrugs as well as she can when she can't move one arm. "I was a little drunk, so." She shoots a curious glance at her own hand. "I'm not even bleeding that much."

"A  _little_  drunk?"

Brooke ignores him. "It doesn't hurt that bad. It's like being stung by a bee," Brooke pauses. "Well, being stung by a bee repeatedly for an hour."

Will just stares at her. "Brooke. What the  _hell_."

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Will likes the tattoo a lot more the next day when the redness has disappeared, leaving only the clean black lines. 

Brooke lets him hold her hand and trace her tattoo for the duration of a movie, and Will's pretty content with this. 

He presses a kiss to the tattoo when the credits roll and Brooke smiles so widely her eyes crinkle up. 

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epilogue: three months later

"Have you seen my earrings? The fancy-smancy ones?" Brooke calls, appearing in the bathroom doorway with a curling iron and half-done hair. 

"Which ones?"

"The dangly ones? Sparkly?"

Will rolls his eyes and suppresses a smile. "I'll check your jewelry box for them." Will was really hoping they wouldn't be late for their reservations, and if he could help Brooke by hunting down her earrings then he would. 

Brooke grins, already turning back to finish her hair. "Thank you!"

Brooke's jewelry box is not actually a box. What it is actually a vintage tea service tray with half a dozen mismatched small plates and teacups that were used for organization at one point, but has since dissolved into a complete mess. 

Will sighs and carefully dislodges one of the teacups. He dumps it onto her dresser, poking around for the earrings Brooke was looking for. 

He freezes, staring down at the ring. He'd know it anywhere, since he'd spent three hours trying to pick it out before he gave up and texted Nicky pictures.

He shifts through the rest of the jewelry hurriedly and finds the other ring, the one that matched the ring on his own finger. 

Will's throat feels suspiciously tight. 

"Babe, did you find my earrings?"

Will grabs the rings and walks toward Brooke on autopilot. 

She gives him a baffled look when he takes her hand. And then she sees the rings. 

Brooke chokes out a disbelieving half sob-half laugh.

Will slips the rings onto her finger, covering her tattoo. 

Brooke sniffs. "I can't cry, I just did my eyeliner."

Will laughs, and scrubs at his eyes because yeah, they have dinner reservations in thirty minutes and he's not walking in with red eyes either. 

Brooke grins, still looking a bit like she might burst into happy tears. "Where'd you find them?"

"Your jewelry box."

Brooke's smile drops. "You have got to be  _kidding_  me. Really? They were in  _my jewelry box_?"

Will bites his cheek to keep from laughing. "Maybe this is a sign that you should organize it."

It's totally worth it when Brooke punches him in the arm, because afterward, she laces their hands together, her rings gleaming brightly against her tan skin as a reminder, that yes, this is real, that yes, this crazy beautiful girl had married  _him_.

Will cups her face with his other hand, leaning forward to press their foreheads together. "You know I love you, right?"

Brooke smiles. "I know. I love you too, you know."

"I know." He kisses her cheek. "Come on, we'll be late for our reservations."

**Author's Note:**

> -no the title has nothing to do with the story i was just listening to FOB on repeat and it was the only thing i could think off
> 
> -brooke's tattoo looks like [this](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/607423068473154831/) but with the thinner line on the bottom. the thin line is for her engagement ring and the thicker one is her wedding ring
> 
> -yes, she does organize her jewelry after this.


End file.
